News on Land

Frustrated over the pace of housing delivery and poor living conditions in informal settlements in South Africa, a group of people from informal settlements in Tshwane municipality in May gathered to protest poor, overcrowded living conditions.

They also demand resettlement, after attempts to occupy a nearby space was met with threats by private land owners.

Application Closing Date - 31 May 2017
Job Start Date - June 2017
Duration - June 2017 to December 2017 – approx. 90 working days in this time period
Location - Remote

BACKGROUND

In countries like Cambodia, Vietnam and Myanmar, tens of thousands face eviction with few tools to fight back

Residents of a village in Hanoi's outskirts took 38 officials and policemen hostage recently in protest against what they claimed was the illegal seizure of their land by a telecommunications firm owned by the military.

The stand-off riveted the nation, and also highlighted the persistence of land disputes in a region where rapid development is pitting large commercial interests against longstanding communities.

How do you deal with bureaucratic inefficiencies and weak capacity, to say nothing of endemic impoverishment, corruption, criminal gangs and staggering inequities that undermine property rights worldwide? Is there a way for those in the private and nonprofit sectors to engage with government to fill some of the gaps in the provision of property rights, without making the situation worse? A way to get involved without further complicating matters?

The Indigenous community has demanded that authorities investigate the killing.

An Indigenous community leader in Mexico has been assassinated alongside his brother, Mexico’s La Jornada newspaper, as the country’s human rights situation continues to spark national and international alarm just days after the murder of a renowned veteran journalist.

SANTIAGO, May 18 2017 (IPS) - Water at high prices, sold as a market good, and small farmers almost a species in extinction, replaced by seasonal workers, are the visible effects of the crisis in rural Chile, 50 years after a land reform which postulated that “the land is for those who work it.”

Poverty eradication is high on President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo administration’s agenda. On his election campaign trail in Bandung, West Java, on July 3, 2014, he elucidated how he would address the acute poverty among 29 million citizens, 18 million of whom live in rural areas. A priority program he envisaged was provision of land to 4.5 million poor families.

Transparency International (TI) is the global civil society organisation leading the fight against corruption. In collaboration with more than 100 chapters worldwide and an international secretariat in Berlin, Germany, TI raises awareness of the damaging effects of corruption and works with partners in government, business and civil society to develop and implement effective measures to tackle it.

 A Brazilian congressional commission, led by a powerful farming lobby, has recommended dismantling the National Indian Foundation, or FUNAI, indigenous rights agency following a land boundary investigation.

The commission suggested FUNAI, which is run by anthropologists, should be replaced with an agency run by the Brazilian Ministry of Justice.

Critics have slammed the suggestion, arguing dismantling FUNAI would empower farmers who seek to use more land in the Amazon rainforest, Jornal O Globo reported.

Annastacia Palaszczuk says lands back with ‘rightful owners’, including site of scheme pushed by Joh Bjelke-Petersen

Traditional owners whose elders fought off a grandiose scheme for a spaceport pushed by Joh Bjelke-Petersen a generation ago have taken back their north Queensland country.

The battle for Bromley, a seminal event in the land rights movement on Cape York, came full circle with a state government handover on Wednesday.

When bulldozers rolled into their forest at the start of last year, the Ekuri community in southeast Nigeria protested: "Indigenes say no!"

They didn't want a superhighway that would wipe their ancestral lands in the Cross River National Park off the map.

Under pressure, the earthmovers left to do their work elsewhere.

But community spokesman Martin Egot said: "They destroyed all the crops, the source of our wealth: cassava, cocoa, plantain... ."